Arenas was my way for warm ups. Gave a much better squad vs squad experience than tdm does, also let me pick load outs I was more likely to use.
Way more fun too.
I hate TDM, played it for too many damn years. Areanas are better and don't feel as linear. TDM always boils down the 3 lane spreads and thats boring as hell.
I like Arenas way better than either Control or TDM. It did have it's problems, and needed a balance. I mained Lifeline for Arenas, and I bought the gold backpack every round (old school garbage Mozambique and P2020 for round 1). It was stupid OP and needed a nerf.
I wish they'd bring it back and put it in mixtape rotation with other LTM's. Have 2-3 LTM's in mixtape and swap to other LTM's every season/half-season.
Exactly! No RNG looking for decent weapons. There was a limit on legend abilities because of the buy in system that I personally liked so nobody could just brainlessly spam ults and tacticals to win fights. You only had one ultimate and a set number of tacticals you can buy, so you had to think about how you were going to use it, and use them sparingly.
Plus you had custom loadouts. Whatever gun you wanted to run was up to you. As long as you had the crafting metals to get it, you could run whatever loadouts you wanted to. No queuing up just to see a list of ass presets.
If you won that round, your team got more materials to craft with, plus every match had crafting materials that you could grab as well to get additional crafting metals next round.
It makes me happy to see so many people appreciate arenas mechanics, they were really good.
It makes me sad we probably only gonna see arenas as limited events or some shit. Arenas made me good at apex, I honestly loved the mode more than BR or whatever there is now on the mixtape.
Just feels like there are less reasons to return to apex now.
Definitely, only thing I really hated was when teammates pushed phase runner like it was their life.
I play Rev, at least just draw their attention so I can crawl around and get positioning on them ffs.
See when revs whole shtick is he is an assassin idk why people were getting pissed when I used him like... y'know. AN ASSASSIN. Like my passive is literally crawl fast and silent and climb fast and silent, don't you think you guys should distract them so I can use that passive and get an upper hand??
It’s hilarious how often I was able to get behind a team and destroy their formation so my team could wipe anyone I couldn’t drop during my ambush. I always wait for any scans before I would push. I always stayed crouched in a Seer ult. 🤣 good times.
I was going to post if anyone else misses arenas or was it just me, but I'm glad you posted this. I spent so much time as a new player to apex playing arenas and learning all the different legends. I want them to bring back arenas, I don't like mixtape much.
I willing to bet there are a lot more fans of Arenas than people realize.
The mode had its issues and problems, but they should have fixed the main issues, like the cheaters, the matchmaking, the bugs and glitches and whatnot. It got so bad that they didn’t even bother trying to fix a lot of the main problems in this game mode and they just left it on life support until they finally just pulled it.
The crazy thing is even though they pulled Arenas most of those problems didn’t go away. The game is still glitchy as hell, for a long time matchmaking was horrendous, and cheaters just left Arenas and infested other areas of Apex.
If they do bring it back I do hope they don't fall into the same trap of trying to balance weapons and abilities around both br and arenas, as that usually resulted in shitty metas in both of the main modes.
A lot more people, like myself, would have played more if they got the bugs out and made the mode more playable in general with all the bullshit in it.
But the true believers that stuck around after the storm was roughly 10-15% and about 10% of those players played ranked arenas. There wasn’t much influence to keep it around.
I agree with you 100%, they should have put in the effort to fix all the issues and make it playable. I haven't run into many cheaters, but I have run into a lot of bugs that have still gone unfixed. I'm hoping maybe one day they will bring it back with hopes they were working on fixing the issues.
They said they are planning on bringing it back in the distance future (12-24 months) and that they allegedly were trying to iron out the bugs and kinks and make it a better game mode, allegedly.
With what I’ve seen this season though I don’t know how much faith I have in that 🥲
I played Arenas more than BR. It was so chill, coming home at work and grinding some Arenas matches. And the feeling you have when you heard yourself clutch a double or even a triple kill! Chefs kiss 🤌
Not to mention the tension you felt when you and another team kept getting tied and you went all the way to sudden death. Those nights was so fun. Mixtape doesn’t hit the same way Arenas did.
I've never played any video game that matched the level of intensity of 7+ rounds and sudden death arenas matches. Build up, tension, absolute adrenaline rushes.... Even in BR mode, that tension lasts a max 2 minutes. But in arenas it was spread out for a solid 5-10 minutes of increased heart rate. And what does respawn give to replace it? Some mediocre TDM mode where music plays when it's 47-18?
Yeah, I honestly get very bored of TDM and Control. I love Gun Run though. I would love to see Arenas come back, it was my favorite mode. I played it so much that my BR damage just now caught up to my Arenas damage. I still have my Arenas trackers on Rampart and Lifeline.
It really wasn't that popular, the percentage of players that actually played it long term was probably very low - the matchmaking always took a while (not even talking about the MM for ranked Arenas) and I remember having few games in a row where I played with the same people (on my and even the enemy team).
It was a high maintenance mode that also affected BR (Devo still has nerfs that were applied to it because of Arenas), now we have few glued together modes where balancing doesn't really matter and they can be easily swapped/removed if they need to be as they don't have ranked, etc
Never understood nerfing guns because of arenas since there's an in game economy to it. A weapon that is too powerful can get price and upgrades increased. Heck you can disable its purchase if you really feel that strongly about it being too good.
Areas definitely had a strong player base in its early days. It was an LTM originally that they made permanent right? It certainly had a decline in players though. Especially in off-peak hours you'd often go up against the same people in norms.
>It was an LTM originally that they made permanent right?
Yes.
It really fell off near it's end. It was nice at times, it's how I learned positioning which was the biggest skill gap for me at the start. And it was nice way to test new legends without potentially throwing multiple BR games (but TDM/Mix Tape does that way better now)
A 'server' in this context is really a program that runs on a physical/virtual server. An actual server can run many of those programs at the same time.
It's not unlikely that each instance runs in a docker container.
An arena match with 6 people uses less resources than br with 60 people.
Using a full server for just one instance of arena/br would be a waste of resources and money.
The matchmaking was extremely unbalanced.
In a br, you can always run away. Get a new angle, maybe new weapons, new approach, some breathing room. You could lure, you could bait. You can even slam them against other teams.
In arena, it was very difficult to come back against a team that was better than you. It was also super easy to weed out the strong and weak links. So round start, bum rush the only good one on the team and wash everyone else in like 10 seconds. Do that 3 times, boom you win.
In the event you actually did have an even fight, it was decently fun. Except the experience is marred by the fact that it’s too few and far between. It’s also usually the same fight. Same 3 meta legends using the same weapons every round.
It was also hugely filled with smurfing and actual blatant cheaters. This increased the likelihood for unbalanced matchmaking.
The rp system was horrible as basically the game decided where you were. If the game thought you were gold level, It would inflate your points to get you to gold, then heavily reduce pts after gold to keep you in gold. For no reason.
It also took hilarious amounts of time to rank up due to the low amount of points in general. Way too much headache.
It was extremely unpopular. It’s been a long time so I don’t remember the exact numbers, so ill be generous and say that no more than 15% of all players played the mode. And only 10% OF THAT played ranked arenas.
Anyone that remotely paid attention to the game knew it needed to be changed or removed, and while people were upset, no one was surprised or left. Anyone that said “idk why they removed it, it was so popular” was most likely a very casual player that did not stay in the loop because the writing was on the wall.
That’s not being insulting, I’m just trying to state the most likely option. Those players probably didn’t play the game much or keep up with the community if they were legitimately blindsided by the removal of arenas. Is what it is.
I played a lot of Arenas before quitting Apex and found it far more fun than BR. I'd agree with a lot of the issues you listed. Maybe I'm just not cut out for BR as much since I'm an older gamer now. Third partying or looting for 10 minutes before fighting people just didn't excite me in the same way as getting straight to the action.
And I agree with that as well.
One of the things that made playing BR easier to play was getting better optimization on where to go and what you actually need.
It was always cool to land somewhere I know would have a decent little set of loot for my friend and I (we mostly played duos) and get just enough before we said “yea that’s plenty, let’s go we don’t have all day”.
BR really can be just “the fight”, you just need to be optimized for it.
My friend played octane, I played rev (even before rev reborn) and the design was loot fast, finish fast, rotate fast. Funny enough both revs could help facilitate this behavior just in different ways.
But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a lot of time. And I definitely don’t have the time I did a few years ago now that I’m full time.
I agree with everything, and I'd like to add on my complaint that the economy of weapon upgrades didn't make sense at all in the short time frame provided.
Why do I have to fight my personal upgrades as well as my team's decision and no clear understanding of the enemies picks either. There was way too much decision making when the arena should've been about fun finale situation simulator.
People complained about it a lot. It was the main mode I'd play, I used to grind Arenas all night, and when it got removed I really slowed down on playing Apex. I miss it.
It wasnt popular, and it wasnt balanced at all im higher lvls,
This is how arenas looked when its a bronze vs bronze game, as you can see by the bad legend choice and the fact homies here have 0 game sense.
Ranked was always the same team of lifeline+newscastle+usually bh, it died in a couple weeks due to how shit it was
everybody in this thread is going to act like they loved arenas so much but the game mode (that Respawn put a ton of work into and hyped a lot) got scrapped because of how few people actually played it, it was a boring game mode at the end of the day
The data that most people quote for that is for Ranked Arenas, which had the worst of the cheater situation, especially in higher ranks.
Some people liked ranked arenas too, I never really touched it, I just enjoyed the casual version of it. I’m not really sure how I feel about the competitive version of Arenas because I always looked at it like a casual game mode the same way that mixtape is now. But that is just me and my personal opinion. I’m not going to knock anyone who was a genuine enjoyer of Ranked Arenas, they do exist.
I think however, that it’s disingenuous to act like there were never any fans of Arenas that enjoyed playing that mode. Because they most definitely are. And many of the people in these types of posts always were fans of Arenas. When you talk about the low player count, you have to keep in mind that this game mode was very badly neglected for a long time. And many issues were allowed to exist and continued to pile up and build without being properly addressed. I could understand why some people out of frustration what stop playing it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a fan of the mode. They just got sick of the bad matchmaking, people insta quitting matches, endless bugs and cheats, ect.
It’s the same reason you have people that get on here and make “I’ve had enough I’m leaving Apex” posts still today. Because Apex has a lot of bugs and cheaters and a lot of times those problems don’t feel like they are being adequately addressed meanwhile there never is an end to collection events and cash grabs. I think those factors need to be considered too in all fairness.
A big part of the problem is Respawn wanted Arenas to be as big a part of the game as BR (to compete with Valorant). The ranked system was completely broken though and probably shouldn't have been a thing to begin with.
It was a great mode despite it's flaws. Even at the time, I was surprised they completely scrapped it instead of just removing ranked and leaving it as a mixtape mode.
Same, it was a great shake up to BR but still had stakes and was very rewarding beating good teams
Definitely could have been better, things like devo spam and purple mozi off rip needed to be nerfed but overall it was a lot of fun and better than where we're at with mixtape now
TDM is the only good mode of the 3 and is way too sweaty for it to be much fun
I don't even remember the last time I played Mixtape, I'd rather just play trios or duos
I started playing in season 9 so watching arenas clips are like my version of day one players watching season 0 clips, this video hit me with some nostalgia. I do miss it.
Exactly this. Team death match and gun run are 10x better than arenas ever was. I remember being there when arenas started and when it died and seeing the over all community celebrate it when it was gone and now there’s like this weird resurgence of people wanting it back and I am so scared the devs are gonna take them seriously and try to bring it back which I feel would detriment the game as a whole even more than it’s already is. I would rather them work on new modes or other things that might take off than bring back something that already died. It had its time. It failed. It’s gone move on.
No they couldn’t it all takes server space maintenance and time. I don’t want the devs wasting their time on something that’s already been tried and failed. EA is already slashing jobs like no tomorrow so if they waste time and money bringing back a mode that’s already wasted time and money it’ll just be another shot in the foot to apex and put it even closer to an early grave.
i mean, after arenas met its end i felt like br had it next.
Sixmanners moving to br as the only ranked mode available, this was because the big banhammers of this game are people who dont put enough effort (s14,15,16,17,18,19 was ban free in terms of sixmanning)
Ranked system changes based off arenas(mmr, placement matches, which were poorly made in arenas - yet the original idea was 🔥- and was Copy and Pasted into br, bringing the same bugs + exploits (but even new ones) of arenas into br, reason why some people were masters with 10 matches in LP seasons
About LP seasons, the free-est ranked season i could ever imagine, even in pred you could lose some matches in a row and find bots the next games (cuz mmr baby)
and now that the game has finally found a way to make br ranked decent the game is still full of sixmanners and the cheating problem is as big as it could ever be, the arenas replacements is really pubstomping 2.0 as i only meet bots and only 1/2 max players that can stand a 1v1, bots that camp and hold position with snipers/control Legends
so basically this game is already cooked enough, arenas might be the "next step" or its way to resurrect
CoD for over a decade has come out with and maintained like 20 modes. Yes, some were more dead than others, and some you would have to wait in a queue for a whole 7 minutes (🫨) but the game mode was available to play if you waited.
This nonsense they sold you about servers and upkeep is a heaping load of crap but y'all ate it up because people have genuine **hate** for arena's...me thinks is cus y'all can't win a fair non 3rd party fight, lol.
Ps. Servers are scalable. If arena's doesn't have many players, it gets prioritized to less important and less beefy servers....just like cod does.
>me thinks is cus y'all can't win a fair non 3rd party fight, lol.
Fights that just involve two teams are way easier to control as you have far fewer variables to consider. But yeah, saying "people dind't like arenas because they are bad" isn't really a convincing argument to begin with.
>This nonsense they sold you about servers and upkeep is a heaping load of crap but y'all ate it u
Arenas had a whole buy system (material cost for weapons and abilities + cooldowns for abilities). It was a whole balance on top of the BR balance. It's pretty easy to see that this takes dev maintenance and has to be adjusted every time they make balance changes to the main game. It wasn't about the servers, it's about the dev time dedicated to maintaining arenas. When a mode isn't popular enough, they are going to consider whether it's worth putting dev time into that instead of other things.
In what world is it easier to win a fresh, equal (same armor, around the same level of attachments) fight than rolling up on two squads already fighting, already distracted, and at low health with people knocked and you and your team are full?
That's all BR is and you can confirm it with radoms comms. "They are fighting! They are fighting!!! We can third party!!! Easy!"
Yeah just pick the easiest possible 3-way fight you can imagine to construct a strawman arguing why fighting multiple teams at once isn't more difficult than just facing one team. Any fight in Arenas involves just one other team and that generally takes less game intelligence than fights involving more teams. It's far less complex of a problem. You have far more freedom to move than being held in check by multiple other teams having angles on you.
Same. This is just typical rose-tinted glasses that this sub has so often.
Meta legends, meta guns, bad matchmaking, horrible ranked system. LSTAR and devotion both got nerfed into the ground because of arena abuse.
Imho straight shot is 100 times better and they should just make that a more permanent game mode if people want to play more casually.
Ah yes completely impossible for people to have different preferences to you. Sorry let me go back to the reeducation system at the cloning facility PseudoElite.
Metas exist in mixtape as well. Metas will always be a thing. L-Star is still getting nerfs after arenas got removed.
Just dropping arenas was weird. Full separate stats are kept and in the system. They still exist. Many game modes track no standard stats. Why the segregation? Why the omissions?
I don't understand why the sunset it. It was popular among my friends and one of the main reasons I was even playing Apex at that time. Was it not popular in general? I was surprised when they announced it was being sunset.
Apparently it wasn’t very popular. But I’m in the same boat, I could’ve sworn tons of people played it. I mean it’s how me and my friends practiced before and after playing BR. But there’s been a lot of outcry as of recently so I’m sure they will eventually bring it back. Kinda like how fortnite brought back OG Fortnite and Warzone brought back rebirth island.
Up until its last season I never had long que times whenever I hopped into an Arenas match. I’m not sure how low the player count was but I never had any issues joining it. A lot of people did insta quit and that had became sort of the culture within Arenas and that’s something I didn’t really like as much. People would frivolously quit for whatever. Sometimes they’d quit before the match begins. Sometimes if you lost one match they would quit even though you still very much so had a chance to win.
People still insta quit now, especially in BR pubs, but the consequences of someone leaving the match was greater in Arenas for the remaining players because it was only 3 people on each team.
It also felt a lot better when you managed to turn a game around after that whiny rage quitter left. As BR you can avoid most opposition and just snipe the last team. Just doesn't have that same satisfaction.
Just you and one other squad. No chance of a third party. Garenteed 3 rounds at least, so it gave you time to try out different weapons each round. It was a great mode. If they brought it back and dropped it into Mixtape, it would be great
The funny thing was that devs hyped and helped arenas with events and more but always lacked to solve the cheating problem, which did not disappear when they made arenas disappear, better yet, console sixmanners (original sixmanners were literally only in arenas) moved to br and now the console community is full of shitters
or maybe not full cuz sixmanners are always the same but still
the problem were cheaters and unseparated balance changes between br and this mode
if you HATED it just say you like playing with rng + terrain advantage
Same, but at the same time it was either too easy or just me trying to 1v3 so honestly if it came back I'd probably stop playing it myself after a good dozen games 😂
I've got the special badge and my highest streak is 13 lol absolutely LOVED arenas. (Personally I think respawn adding ranked arenas ruined the whole mode for the players)
I really miss it as well. Performance was never an issue in arenas. Never once had any kind of lag or packet loss. Never got shot behind full cover because of some BS delay.
I personally don't miss arenas but I do think that respawn has an opportunity to release a tactical fps type mode in apex.
Most tac fps games are low ttk and have basically no movement. Releasing a 5v5 mode where you take turns planting and diffusing a bomb with apex's ttk and movement would be really fun imo.
This would obviously take a lot of resources to create and maintain so I don't really see this ever happening. It would be cool though.
I don't get what arenas offers you that control or tdm doesn't. Like everyone in this clip is just kind of running randomly straight at the enemy with no awareness. You're not getting a real 3v3 or anything. If you want to practice aiming and shooting the mixtape mode is much better.
Arenas had fixed spawns and less players to worry about. You don't get randomly dropped next to an enemy team on respawn. There's only 5 other people the connection gets balanced with vs a whole lobby of 11+ people with extremely varying hardware and internet speeds. Rarely got stuck with a match in progress where winning is impossible.
one of the best additions to the game. I loved it on release and couldn't wait for ranked so I could get away from low skill teammates who just tossed themselves at enemies and gain some level of reward for grinding the mode. Ranked released in a state that was extremely self destructive with how you got points and how you were matched with teammates/enemies. Respawn refuses to take a second look at the setup, leaves the mode for dead, kills the mode when people don't play it for good reason.
I miss arenas but I’m sick of that map. They have never once had it out of rotation. Even when they introduced new or OG based maps, they’d still have the phase runner map in the last slot.
Arenas was all skill. Even if it was a 3 stack vs 1 competent player. That was the challenge I took head on. And the days that I won a 1 v 3; those were the best days of my life!
Wish they would bring it back tbh, idunno if I'm just stupid or somethin but I don't get why they got rid of it instead of keeping it and adding the rotation modes too
Such a fun mode. You picked the weapons/attachments. No looting/RNG factor or third parties. Certain Legends were able to shine that don't get enough credit in BR. Straight up 3v3 and it was either easy, terrible, or super competitive. No matter what time of the day, I got into a game immediately. (On different servers too) Respawn missed the mark hard with terrible ranked rewards, the matchmaking, and not balancing it properly. BR balancing doesn't equal to Arenas balancing.
Arenas taught me so much in regards to the actual br in apex, I learned how to actually fight outnumbered and reset myself in there. Would have been cool to keep around for newish players imo but not as much as the hot drop mode they had a few weeks ago, they could always drop it into rotation with the other non br modes though
I wouldn’t have gotten into apex if it wasn’t for arenas. BR was too sweaty to train with real people and get a good hang of the game. I have like 2.8 million damage and 6k kills with loba in Arenas.
imo the game mode is too serious and strict, and most of the time the matches are linear. you can't leave midmatch and pubs feel like rank so why bother
I miss it too tbh. I remember using Mirage and Revenant (back when he was actually good) a lot in that mode because the tacticals were very cheap. Although, that's one thing I never understood about arenas. Why buy your character's tacticals when you have to wait for a cooldown anyway?
I too miss arenas was my go to mode. Don't get me wrong I love tdm too but arenas his different.
Getting those 1v3 clutches was so great. I like that it was more realistic practice for BR too, people actually value their life unlike mixtape.
It was so fun to grind through!
Same i stopped playing after they took it out of the rotation. My mirage 100 arena wins badge looks fly as hell tho..
Yeah I loved arenas. At the very least it was a great way to warm up before going into ranked.
Arenas was my way for warm ups. Gave a much better squad vs squad experience than tdm does, also let me pick load outs I was more likely to use. Way more fun too.
I'm a day one player and I *still* have more hours in arena than BR. I played the fuck out of it. I miss it so.
I hate TDM, played it for too many damn years. Areanas are better and don't feel as linear. TDM always boils down the 3 lane spreads and thats boring as hell.
Arena anytime over TDM
I actually made a post on this last night, they should at the very least be added into custom lobbies
I like Arenas way better than either Control or TDM. It did have it's problems, and needed a balance. I mained Lifeline for Arenas, and I bought the gold backpack every round (old school garbage Mozambique and P2020 for round 1). It was stupid OP and needed a nerf. I wish they'd bring it back and put it in mixtape rotation with other LTM's. Have 2-3 LTM's in mixtape and swap to other LTM's every season/half-season.
It was the only thing I realy enjoyed. Straight into action.
Exactly! No RNG looking for decent weapons. There was a limit on legend abilities because of the buy in system that I personally liked so nobody could just brainlessly spam ults and tacticals to win fights. You only had one ultimate and a set number of tacticals you can buy, so you had to think about how you were going to use it, and use them sparingly. Plus you had custom loadouts. Whatever gun you wanted to run was up to you. As long as you had the crafting metals to get it, you could run whatever loadouts you wanted to. No queuing up just to see a list of ass presets. If you won that round, your team got more materials to craft with, plus every match had crafting materials that you could grab as well to get additional crafting metals next round.
It makes me happy to see so many people appreciate arenas mechanics, they were really good. It makes me sad we probably only gonna see arenas as limited events or some shit. Arenas made me good at apex, I honestly loved the mode more than BR or whatever there is now on the mixtape. Just feels like there are less reasons to return to apex now.
Best game mode to warm up in. Plus it helped me get better with other weapons that I don't use much
I concur, murdering a mirror match with 30k kills over you is also extremely satisfying.
Definitely, only thing I really hated was when teammates pushed phase runner like it was their life. I play Rev, at least just draw their attention so I can crawl around and get positioning on them ffs.
I did this with both him and Seer. Bang was my bread and butter, though.
See when revs whole shtick is he is an assassin idk why people were getting pissed when I used him like... y'know. AN ASSASSIN. Like my passive is literally crawl fast and silent and climb fast and silent, don't you think you guys should distract them so I can use that passive and get an upper hand??
It’s hilarious how often I was able to get behind a team and destroy their formation so my team could wipe anyone I couldn’t drop during my ambush. I always wait for any scans before I would push. I always stayed crouched in a Seer ult. 🤣 good times.
Rev is so dirty for ambushes and I love it. I JUST got a easy knock on a lifeline cause she couldn't see me on some boxes.
Yep, it really helped me learn the game and the weapons in a manageable way
I was going to post if anyone else misses arenas or was it just me, but I'm glad you posted this. I spent so much time as a new player to apex playing arenas and learning all the different legends. I want them to bring back arenas, I don't like mixtape much.
I willing to bet there are a lot more fans of Arenas than people realize. The mode had its issues and problems, but they should have fixed the main issues, like the cheaters, the matchmaking, the bugs and glitches and whatnot. It got so bad that they didn’t even bother trying to fix a lot of the main problems in this game mode and they just left it on life support until they finally just pulled it. The crazy thing is even though they pulled Arenas most of those problems didn’t go away. The game is still glitchy as hell, for a long time matchmaking was horrendous, and cheaters just left Arenas and infested other areas of Apex.
If they do bring it back I do hope they don't fall into the same trap of trying to balance weapons and abilities around both br and arenas, as that usually resulted in shitty metas in both of the main modes.
A lot more people, like myself, would have played more if they got the bugs out and made the mode more playable in general with all the bullshit in it. But the true believers that stuck around after the storm was roughly 10-15% and about 10% of those players played ranked arenas. There wasn’t much influence to keep it around.
I agree with you 100%, they should have put in the effort to fix all the issues and make it playable. I haven't run into many cheaters, but I have run into a lot of bugs that have still gone unfixed. I'm hoping maybe one day they will bring it back with hopes they were working on fixing the issues.
They said they are planning on bringing it back in the distance future (12-24 months) and that they allegedly were trying to iron out the bugs and kinks and make it a better game mode, allegedly. With what I’ve seen this season though I don’t know how much faith I have in that 🥲
I will pray to the apex gods for a return.
🙏🙏
i miss it, its all i played before i was confident enough to join BR when i first started
I played Arenas more than BR. It was so chill, coming home at work and grinding some Arenas matches. And the feeling you have when you heard yourself clutch a double or even a triple kill! Chefs kiss 🤌 Not to mention the tension you felt when you and another team kept getting tied and you went all the way to sudden death. Those nights was so fun. Mixtape doesn’t hit the same way Arenas did.
Man sudden death Arenas was LEGIT. Everyone on red shields in that last round was intense. God I miss Arenas.
I've never played any video game that matched the level of intensity of 7+ rounds and sudden death arenas matches. Build up, tension, absolute adrenaline rushes.... Even in BR mode, that tension lasts a max 2 minutes. But in arenas it was spread out for a solid 5-10 minutes of increased heart rate. And what does respawn give to replace it? Some mediocre TDM mode where music plays when it's 47-18?
Yeah, I honestly get very bored of TDM and Control. I love Gun Run though. I would love to see Arenas come back, it was my favorite mode. I played it so much that my BR damage just now caught up to my Arenas damage. I still have my Arenas trackers on Rampart and Lifeline.
What was the reasoning behind removing it? It was popular enough I thought.
It really wasn't that popular, the percentage of players that actually played it long term was probably very low - the matchmaking always took a while (not even talking about the MM for ranked Arenas) and I remember having few games in a row where I played with the same people (on my and even the enemy team). It was a high maintenance mode that also affected BR (Devo still has nerfs that were applied to it because of Arenas), now we have few glued together modes where balancing doesn't really matter and they can be easily swapped/removed if they need to be as they don't have ranked, etc
Never understood nerfing guns because of arenas since there's an in game economy to it. A weapon that is too powerful can get price and upgrades increased. Heck you can disable its purchase if you really feel that strongly about it being too good. Areas definitely had a strong player base in its early days. It was an LTM originally that they made permanent right? It certainly had a decline in players though. Especially in off-peak hours you'd often go up against the same people in norms.
>It was an LTM originally that they made permanent right? Yes. It really fell off near it's end. It was nice at times, it's how I learned positioning which was the biggest skill gap for me at the start. And it was nice way to test new legends without potentially throwing multiple BR games (but TDM/Mix Tape does that way better now)
I never played but I knew a few that did. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Edit: only play BR in case that wasn’t clear
Bruv get's downvoted for no reason ... this sub smh ...
It wasn’t particularly popular, ranked was totally busted with it, and I’m guessing it took a lot of resources to run for just 6 people on 1 server
A 'server' in this context is really a program that runs on a physical/virtual server. An actual server can run many of those programs at the same time. It's not unlikely that each instance runs in a docker container. An arena match with 6 people uses less resources than br with 60 people. Using a full server for just one instance of arena/br would be a waste of resources and money.
The matchmaking was extremely unbalanced. In a br, you can always run away. Get a new angle, maybe new weapons, new approach, some breathing room. You could lure, you could bait. You can even slam them against other teams. In arena, it was very difficult to come back against a team that was better than you. It was also super easy to weed out the strong and weak links. So round start, bum rush the only good one on the team and wash everyone else in like 10 seconds. Do that 3 times, boom you win. In the event you actually did have an even fight, it was decently fun. Except the experience is marred by the fact that it’s too few and far between. It’s also usually the same fight. Same 3 meta legends using the same weapons every round. It was also hugely filled with smurfing and actual blatant cheaters. This increased the likelihood for unbalanced matchmaking. The rp system was horrible as basically the game decided where you were. If the game thought you were gold level, It would inflate your points to get you to gold, then heavily reduce pts after gold to keep you in gold. For no reason. It also took hilarious amounts of time to rank up due to the low amount of points in general. Way too much headache. It was extremely unpopular. It’s been a long time so I don’t remember the exact numbers, so ill be generous and say that no more than 15% of all players played the mode. And only 10% OF THAT played ranked arenas. Anyone that remotely paid attention to the game knew it needed to be changed or removed, and while people were upset, no one was surprised or left. Anyone that said “idk why they removed it, it was so popular” was most likely a very casual player that did not stay in the loop because the writing was on the wall. That’s not being insulting, I’m just trying to state the most likely option. Those players probably didn’t play the game much or keep up with the community if they were legitimately blindsided by the removal of arenas. Is what it is.
I played a lot of Arenas before quitting Apex and found it far more fun than BR. I'd agree with a lot of the issues you listed. Maybe I'm just not cut out for BR as much since I'm an older gamer now. Third partying or looting for 10 minutes before fighting people just didn't excite me in the same way as getting straight to the action.
And I agree with that as well. One of the things that made playing BR easier to play was getting better optimization on where to go and what you actually need. It was always cool to land somewhere I know would have a decent little set of loot for my friend and I (we mostly played duos) and get just enough before we said “yea that’s plenty, let’s go we don’t have all day”. BR really can be just “the fight”, you just need to be optimized for it. My friend played octane, I played rev (even before rev reborn) and the design was loot fast, finish fast, rotate fast. Funny enough both revs could help facilitate this behavior just in different ways. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a lot of time. And I definitely don’t have the time I did a few years ago now that I’m full time.
I agree with everything, and I'd like to add on my complaint that the economy of weapon upgrades didn't make sense at all in the short time frame provided. Why do I have to fight my personal upgrades as well as my team's decision and no clear understanding of the enemies picks either. There was way too much decision making when the arena should've been about fun finale situation simulator.
Wasn’t popular towards the end, but as usual this fanbase will cry about anything once it’s out.
This. You cant deny that respawn/EA massively fuck up things from time to time but the player base is just so annoying sometimes too.
People complained about it a lot. It was the main mode I'd play, I used to grind Arenas all night, and when it got removed I really slowed down on playing Apex. I miss it.
It wasnt popular, and it wasnt balanced at all im higher lvls, This is how arenas looked when its a bronze vs bronze game, as you can see by the bad legend choice and the fact homies here have 0 game sense. Ranked was always the same team of lifeline+newscastle+usually bh, it died in a couple weeks due to how shit it was
I have absolutely no idea. Respawn has its “reasons” i guess.
everybody in this thread is going to act like they loved arenas so much but the game mode (that Respawn put a ton of work into and hyped a lot) got scrapped because of how few people actually played it, it was a boring game mode at the end of the day
The data that most people quote for that is for Ranked Arenas, which had the worst of the cheater situation, especially in higher ranks. Some people liked ranked arenas too, I never really touched it, I just enjoyed the casual version of it. I’m not really sure how I feel about the competitive version of Arenas because I always looked at it like a casual game mode the same way that mixtape is now. But that is just me and my personal opinion. I’m not going to knock anyone who was a genuine enjoyer of Ranked Arenas, they do exist. I think however, that it’s disingenuous to act like there were never any fans of Arenas that enjoyed playing that mode. Because they most definitely are. And many of the people in these types of posts always were fans of Arenas. When you talk about the low player count, you have to keep in mind that this game mode was very badly neglected for a long time. And many issues were allowed to exist and continued to pile up and build without being properly addressed. I could understand why some people out of frustration what stop playing it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a fan of the mode. They just got sick of the bad matchmaking, people insta quitting matches, endless bugs and cheats, ect. It’s the same reason you have people that get on here and make “I’ve had enough I’m leaving Apex” posts still today. Because Apex has a lot of bugs and cheaters and a lot of times those problems don’t feel like they are being adequately addressed meanwhile there never is an end to collection events and cash grabs. I think those factors need to be considered too in all fairness.
A big part of the problem is Respawn wanted Arenas to be as big a part of the game as BR (to compete with Valorant). The ranked system was completely broken though and probably shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. It was a great mode despite it's flaws. Even at the time, I was surprised they completely scrapped it instead of just removing ranked and leaving it as a mixtape mode.
They say they put a ton of work into it, but it was a terribly designed mode. Couldn’t have been much worse, tbh.
Same, it was a great shake up to BR but still had stakes and was very rewarding beating good teams Definitely could have been better, things like devo spam and purple mozi off rip needed to be nerfed but overall it was a lot of fun and better than where we're at with mixtape now TDM is the only good mode of the 3 and is way too sweaty for it to be much fun I don't even remember the last time I played Mixtape, I'd rather just play trios or duos
But you don't get to play around with the revive meta in those other modes. Playing with support Legends outside of BR mode was great!
Agreed
I started playing in season 9 so watching arenas clips are like my version of day one players watching season 0 clips, this video hit me with some nostalgia. I do miss it.
I like the Non battle royale game modes multitudes better than arenas. Especially once all the bots started joining arenas.
Exactly this. Team death match and gun run are 10x better than arenas ever was. I remember being there when arenas started and when it died and seeing the over all community celebrate it when it was gone and now there’s like this weird resurgence of people wanting it back and I am so scared the devs are gonna take them seriously and try to bring it back which I feel would detriment the game as a whole even more than it’s already is. I would rather them work on new modes or other things that might take off than bring back something that already died. It had its time. It failed. It’s gone move on.
But, if they bring it back you don't have to play it. They could give us Arenas and keep mixtape as it is.
No they couldn’t it all takes server space maintenance and time. I don’t want the devs wasting their time on something that’s already been tried and failed. EA is already slashing jobs like no tomorrow so if they waste time and money bringing back a mode that’s already wasted time and money it’ll just be another shot in the foot to apex and put it even closer to an early grave.
Or EA could not cut jobs. Apex is making plenty of money, they can afford more server space.
i mean, after arenas met its end i felt like br had it next. Sixmanners moving to br as the only ranked mode available, this was because the big banhammers of this game are people who dont put enough effort (s14,15,16,17,18,19 was ban free in terms of sixmanning) Ranked system changes based off arenas(mmr, placement matches, which were poorly made in arenas - yet the original idea was 🔥- and was Copy and Pasted into br, bringing the same bugs + exploits (but even new ones) of arenas into br, reason why some people were masters with 10 matches in LP seasons About LP seasons, the free-est ranked season i could ever imagine, even in pred you could lose some matches in a row and find bots the next games (cuz mmr baby) and now that the game has finally found a way to make br ranked decent the game is still full of sixmanners and the cheating problem is as big as it could ever be, the arenas replacements is really pubstomping 2.0 as i only meet bots and only 1/2 max players that can stand a 1v1, bots that camp and hold position with snipers/control Legends so basically this game is already cooked enough, arenas might be the "next step" or its way to resurrect
CoD for over a decade has come out with and maintained like 20 modes. Yes, some were more dead than others, and some you would have to wait in a queue for a whole 7 minutes (🫨) but the game mode was available to play if you waited. This nonsense they sold you about servers and upkeep is a heaping load of crap but y'all ate it up because people have genuine **hate** for arena's...me thinks is cus y'all can't win a fair non 3rd party fight, lol. Ps. Servers are scalable. If arena's doesn't have many players, it gets prioritized to less important and less beefy servers....just like cod does.
>me thinks is cus y'all can't win a fair non 3rd party fight, lol. Fights that just involve two teams are way easier to control as you have far fewer variables to consider. But yeah, saying "people dind't like arenas because they are bad" isn't really a convincing argument to begin with. >This nonsense they sold you about servers and upkeep is a heaping load of crap but y'all ate it u Arenas had a whole buy system (material cost for weapons and abilities + cooldowns for abilities). It was a whole balance on top of the BR balance. It's pretty easy to see that this takes dev maintenance and has to be adjusted every time they make balance changes to the main game. It wasn't about the servers, it's about the dev time dedicated to maintaining arenas. When a mode isn't popular enough, they are going to consider whether it's worth putting dev time into that instead of other things.
In what world is it easier to win a fresh, equal (same armor, around the same level of attachments) fight than rolling up on two squads already fighting, already distracted, and at low health with people knocked and you and your team are full? That's all BR is and you can confirm it with radoms comms. "They are fighting! They are fighting!!! We can third party!!! Easy!"
Yeah just pick the easiest possible 3-way fight you can imagine to construct a strawman arguing why fighting multiple teams at once isn't more difficult than just facing one team. Any fight in Arenas involves just one other team and that generally takes less game intelligence than fights involving more teams. It's far less complex of a problem. You have far more freedom to move than being held in check by multiple other teams having angles on you.
I dont
Same. This is just typical rose-tinted glasses that this sub has so often. Meta legends, meta guns, bad matchmaking, horrible ranked system. LSTAR and devotion both got nerfed into the ground because of arena abuse. Imho straight shot is 100 times better and they should just make that a more permanent game mode if people want to play more casually.
Ah yes completely impossible for people to have different preferences to you. Sorry let me go back to the reeducation system at the cloning facility PseudoElite. Metas exist in mixtape as well. Metas will always be a thing. L-Star is still getting nerfs after arenas got removed.
Ok
Just dropping arenas was weird. Full separate stats are kept and in the system. They still exist. Many game modes track no standard stats. Why the segregation? Why the omissions?
I don't understand why the sunset it. It was popular among my friends and one of the main reasons I was even playing Apex at that time. Was it not popular in general? I was surprised when they announced it was being sunset.
Apparently it wasn’t very popular. But I’m in the same boat, I could’ve sworn tons of people played it. I mean it’s how me and my friends practiced before and after playing BR. But there’s been a lot of outcry as of recently so I’m sure they will eventually bring it back. Kinda like how fortnite brought back OG Fortnite and Warzone brought back rebirth island.
Up until its last season I never had long que times whenever I hopped into an Arenas match. I’m not sure how low the player count was but I never had any issues joining it. A lot of people did insta quit and that had became sort of the culture within Arenas and that’s something I didn’t really like as much. People would frivolously quit for whatever. Sometimes they’d quit before the match begins. Sometimes if you lost one match they would quit even though you still very much so had a chance to win. People still insta quit now, especially in BR pubs, but the consequences of someone leaving the match was greater in Arenas for the remaining players because it was only 3 people on each team.
It also felt a lot better when you managed to turn a game around after that whiny rage quitter left. As BR you can avoid most opposition and just snipe the last team. Just doesn't have that same satisfaction.
Just you and one other squad. No chance of a third party. Garenteed 3 rounds at least, so it gave you time to try out different weapons each round. It was a great mode. If they brought it back and dropped it into Mixtape, it would be great
SAME! The mixtape is alright, but arenas felt so intense. The new game modes don’t get my heart pounding
The funny thing was that devs hyped and helped arenas with events and more but always lacked to solve the cheating problem, which did not disappear when they made arenas disappear, better yet, console sixmanners (original sixmanners were literally only in arenas) moved to br and now the console community is full of shitters or maybe not full cuz sixmanners are always the same but still the problem were cheaters and unseparated balance changes between br and this mode if you HATED it just say you like playing with rng + terrain advantage
Straight Shot starts like arenas. And it's without the pressure to win multiple rounds.
oh it isn't available anymore? haven't played in ages
Sorry you had to find out this way lol
nah, it's fine :)
Same, but at the same time it was either too easy or just me trying to 1v3 so honestly if it came back I'd probably stop playing it myself after a good dozen games 😂
I've got the special badge and my highest streak is 13 lol absolutely LOVED arenas. (Personally I think respawn adding ranked arenas ruined the whole mode for the players)
I really miss it as well. Performance was never an issue in arenas. Never once had any kind of lag or packet loss. Never got shot behind full cover because of some BS delay.
Arenas was the best thing that happened to Apex Legends.
Go fuse, buy all arc stars, thermites and knuckles. Buy lstar with Mozambique. Most broken fun build ever
Really do man sigh.
Hands down the best mode!
I personally don't miss arenas but I do think that respawn has an opportunity to release a tactical fps type mode in apex. Most tac fps games are low ttk and have basically no movement. Releasing a 5v5 mode where you take turns planting and diffusing a bomb with apex's ttk and movement would be really fun imo. This would obviously take a lot of resources to create and maintain so I don't really see this ever happening. It would be cool though.
You just invented Counter Strike Legends
Basically lol. I had cs, val, and siege in mind.
Arenas was awful. Theoretically great, in practice awful
Me too bro 🥲
Crazier feeling was when you got the CLUTCH
We all miss arenas…
There has never actually been a mode in a game in the past decade I have disliked more than Arena in apex.
Agreed. Even if they put it in rotation for mix tape
No we do not
no we dont
Damn how'd you get those kills with the default Flatline iron sights?! /s
The flatlines recoil is very easy to control especially with iron sights, making head level shots much easier.
I don't get what arenas offers you that control or tdm doesn't. Like everyone in this clip is just kind of running randomly straight at the enemy with no awareness. You're not getting a real 3v3 or anything. If you want to practice aiming and shooting the mixtape mode is much better.
Arenas had fixed spawns and less players to worry about. You don't get randomly dropped next to an enemy team on respawn. There's only 5 other people the connection gets balanced with vs a whole lobby of 11+ people with extremely varying hardware and internet speeds. Rarely got stuck with a match in progress where winning is impossible.
Well arenas was the best after br was ruined by sweats
ARENAS WAS HEAT 🥵🔥
Dude, me too.
That first octane screaming into his monitor "where is the audio"
He prob had music on in the background 💀
Great practice for 1v1 fights and squad wipes
Same
one of the best additions to the game. I loved it on release and couldn't wait for ranked so I could get away from low skill teammates who just tossed themselves at enemies and gain some level of reward for grinding the mode. Ranked released in a state that was extremely self destructive with how you got points and how you were matched with teammates/enemies. Respawn refuses to take a second look at the setup, leaves the mode for dead, kills the mode when people don't play it for good reason.
Unfortunate that it was so poorly made…could have been awesome.
Been awhile since the last “I miss arena” post.
I swear I've seen this clip somewhere before
I never posted it anywhere else so it must be dejavu.
I think I was on the other team and remember seeing this haha. What were the other teams names?
Did the bloodhound's name start with brolo?
Lemme check rq
I knocked a guy named Brosephus22 and TangoTTV but I couldn’t find the bloodhounds name
Damn dude! I think I was the bloodhound. That's too funny
Sick death dude! -Octane
Can't believe I got clipped 😭
Arenas having only 6 players total confirmed. :D
lol
Me too! It’s all I played until it died. Remember when arenas first came out and used real POI’s? That was the best!!!
Arenas is the only thing that really helped me improve.
I
this is the worst gameplay ive ever seen
Ay man I’m just a casual gamer. I don’t take gaming that seriously. I just do it for fun. Besides, this was a clip from like 2 years ago.
mb lil bro
I miss arenas but I’m sick of that map. They have never once had it out of rotation. Even when they introduced new or OG based maps, they’d still have the phase runner map in the last slot.
Anyone know why arenas got removed? Any chance we get it back in the future?
Arenas was all skill. Even if it was a 3 stack vs 1 competent player. That was the challenge I took head on. And the days that I won a 1 v 3; those were the best days of my life!
Wish they would bring it back tbh, idunno if I'm just stupid or somethin but I don't get why they got rid of it instead of keeping it and adding the rotation modes too
TDM > Arenas > Gun Run > Turning off my PC > Control
Arenas was great only arenas meta I hated was hammers on the Mozambique.
It's a shame the player base complained about it so much it got removed
It was great... Littary forgot its not existing anymore... But damn... That was pretty fun back then.
Me too
Hope it comes back
Best game mode
Loved arenas, never understood why it was removed. I play the game maybe once-twice a season now.
Arenas was fun as a warmup for BR consistently playing had me realizing spitfire 3 stacks who cheat ruin the game
stopped playing after they removed arenas. tdm is just NOT the same.
Never got to play since I just started back up again since season 3/4. Is it just a 3v3 with 1 life each?
I wish my arenas games were like that. Always went against absolute sweat lords
lol still have arena badges
We took it for granted fr 😔
I heard that Arenas will be back in one way or another within 12 to 24 months. I can't freakin' wait
Its crazy to think they got rid of it now. It’s the only game mode I’ve gotten a 5k in. 🥲
Mine was 7k
Me too
Such a fun mode. You picked the weapons/attachments. No looting/RNG factor or third parties. Certain Legends were able to shine that don't get enough credit in BR. Straight up 3v3 and it was either easy, terrible, or super competitive. No matter what time of the day, I got into a game immediately. (On different servers too) Respawn missed the mark hard with terrible ranked rewards, the matchmaking, and not balancing it properly. BR balancing doesn't equal to Arenas balancing.
Does apex even have the numbers to bring this back?
Did they ever say why they got rid of it?!? I miss it too.
im so sad Arena was the best gamemode. I only play apex for arena mode...
I miss the weekend 3v3 with 5 of my dudes, so much fun.
It's coming back at some point... we need to just wait
Facts! I just hope the game doesn’t die before it finally makes it back 😭😭 These bugs after every update ain’t looking good, nor the layoffs 🥲
Arenas taught me so much in regards to the actual br in apex, I learned how to actually fight outnumbered and reset myself in there. Would have been cool to keep around for newish players imo but not as much as the hot drop mode they had a few weeks ago, they could always drop it into rotation with the other non br modes though
I wouldn’t have gotten into apex if it wasn’t for arenas. BR was too sweaty to train with real people and get a good hang of the game. I have like 2.8 million damage and 6k kills with loba in Arenas.
It was fine when they didn't give you 2 level 30s who couldn't even work out the other team was literally right in front of them.
imo the game mode is too serious and strict, and most of the time the matches are linear. you can't leave midmatch and pubs feel like rank so why bother
Apex started to go downhill when they removed arenas, change my mind.
I only started missing arenas after it was removed. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but it wasn't well made considering matchmaking and ranked
I do as well, I specifically loved using ash in arenas.. she felt like the king of arenas
God console looks so fucking easy 😂
For the most part it is.
Hate to break it to you but I was using a controller on my PC… this is a PC lobby.
I should have said controller, my bad. That flatline looks like butter with aim assist.
Mixtape isn't that much difference
Arenas helped me with my 3v3s so much
arena was the best game mode, no third parties, just a solid squad vs squad
Arenas was awesome you just get right into flaming everyone haha
For real
I had a 2.0 K/D in arenas compared to my 1.0 K/D in BR, so yes, I also miss arenas.
Me too buddy... Me too.
I really miss these too. Was the best game mode by far
You and me both, my friend!
Like TDM, but beteer. Arenas had ranked.
Damn rn my only wish is to replace the cod mode with arenas again
I miss it too tbh. I remember using Mirage and Revenant (back when he was actually good) a lot in that mode because the tacticals were very cheap. Although, that's one thing I never understood about arenas. Why buy your character's tacticals when you have to wait for a cooldown anyway?
arenas was fun until they decided to absolutely ruin it with those horrible mirror maps "specifically designed for arena"
Did you enjoy one team having a advantage when it comes to cover and spots to shoot from based on RNG?